Salvage
by Kezelle
Summary: What if when Cuddy went to House's apartment at the end of 'Help Me?" he wasn't there? An alternate season seven.
1. Chapter 1

Salvage

A/N

Just a little 'what if' I've had rattling around in my head. What if when Cuddy went to House's apartment, he wasn't there? What if House had been more seriously injured in the secondary collapse than he had first thought?

Just an alternate season 7 where House and Cuddy don't jump into a relationship doomed to fail.

I really enjoyed the first five seasons of House and loved the characters. I have to admit i stopped caring about the characters during season 6. I used to love the Cuddy/House/Wilson dynamic and hated how it developed in the 6th season.

And i was pretty annoyed at the emphasis on Houses pain being mostly if not completely psychosomatic. People with chronic pain and health conditions have to walk that fine line between pain relief and dependence on opioid's and live with the consequences, i.e. Liver damage, nausea, toxicity. Making House a drug abuser then get clean and manage on ibuprofen alone... And his 'bad days' all precipitated by an emotional event... It just didn't sit well with me.

I do not own House or any of its characters. I am writing this purely for fun.

* * *

He hadn't felt this numb in a while, he mused in disinterest. Sitting on the cold wooden picnic table in the park at two in the morning in the freezing cold, the air heavy and damp, might have had something to do with it. Though it felt different, like the numbness came from deep within and was radiating out.

He let out a cough, wincing at the pain in his chest. He would have a bruise tomorrow he predicted, remembering the slab of concrete that had glanced off his chest during the secondary collapse. He had been lucky he thought distantly, not to have had a pneumothorax like Hanna. A small voice was telling him to get it checked out at the hospital but he couldn't go back now. A few cracked ribs could wait.

Even the constant fire in his thigh was somewhat muted. But still there. Always there. Forever reminding him of things he would rather forget. That he was broken, defective. That he couldn't completely trust anybody and everybody lies. That everybody left.

In truth it wasn't a lesson he hadn't learnt long before the infraction. His mother had been the first he supposed. Not that he knew it at the time. She had cheated on her spouse, gotten pregnant and chose to pass off the child as her husband's child. Then she had turned her back every time he was 'disciplined'.

John House had taught him that words, apologies, pleas meant nothing. That he was a mistake, unwanted and a pathetic excuse for a man. House had remembered trying as a kid. He remembered a hunting trip when he was six. His stomach churning and throwing up when his father had shot and killed a young deer on one trip. The other father and son on that hunting trip had mocked him but John House had a different look in his eye… When they had gotten home, John had set about 'toughing' his son up.

Ice baths, missed meals, standing to attention for hours, the belt...His mother continuing to betray him with her silence.

As a teenager House had realised he was never going to please his father. People would have been surprised to know that before he was twelve he had been the model student. At twelve when he figured out John House was not his biological father and that his mother was a liar… Well what was the point in trying to please the man? He never would. It wasn't till he got bigger and stronger that he began to openly defy him. At eighteen he had secretly applied for and was granted a scholarship to college and enjoyed telling John exactly what he could do with his long held plans of his 'son' becoming a Marine. That had been the last time John had ever laid a finger on him, physically.

From that moment on, he had thought he was a free man. He would no longer have to hold his tongue or put up with another person's crap. And he no longer cared what anyone thought. It was much easier to go through life without having to please other people.

As for authority figures…well his father was a marine and the vast number of teachers, emergency room workers and on a few memorable occasions' military police, in the many different parts of the globe he had lived during his childhood had proven just how many stupid, blind people there were in the world. Authority meant nothing to him. It didn't mean respect, intelligence or safety.

It wasn't until Stacy that he even really began to trust someone. She had been a surprise. He'd had many girlfriends, short relationships but she was the first he would even consider flirting with the word love.

Until the infarct. He had trusted her and she'd betrayed it. It didn't matter the reasons. Even if a very small and very recent part of him knew she had done the right thing. The moment she had made that decision, they were done. House thought he had been betrayed for the last time.

Unfortunately he was wrong. In the past year alone. The two people he had been closest to in years had betrayed him.

He had been trying so hard to stay clean. The hallucinations that had shaken him to the core and forever disturbed his sense of reality had made the prospect of relapsing terrifying in a way he could never, would never explain.

He could no longer trust himself.

Yet the craving for Vicodin was an ever present threat to his peace of mind. His leg hurt from the moment he woke, to the moment he passed out. He was secretly ashamed that he had slowly succumbed to increasing amounts of alcohol but as the year was getting progressively worse…what was the point? No one else seemed to think he would stay clean so why should he resist the allure of those two pill bottles hiding behind his bathroom mirror…

But here he was. Sitting on a picnic table. Numb, in pain but refusing to move. Eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun would make an appearance in a few hours. If he could just make it to morning, maybe then it would be safer to go home…

* * *

It was long past midnight when Chase decided to leave the hospital. The last of the victims of the crane collapse had been triaged and were stable enough that he felt safe to go home for some rest. Deciding against driving in his exhausted state, he chose instead to cut across the park. Perhaps not the best thought he realised as he picked up the pace along the path.

He didn't know why he looked up at the picnic tables. There had been no noise he was aware of, no movement. But he turned his head and looked up at the benches to see his boss sitting quietly on the bench.

It wasn't the fact that House was sitting on a picnic table at four o'clock in the morning that was so disturbing. Even the fact that he was still covered in grey dust and had blood on his shirt wasn't what had him moving quickly over to the man. It was the stillness. Although House appeared wide awake, sitting upright, his hands where still. For as long as Chase had known him, House had never been so still (unless unconscious). He would have one of his many knick-knacks or his walking stick or something in his hands as his great if eccentric mind worked out the latest mystery presented to him.

Sitting alone, in the freezing cold at four am, completely still after the night he must have had…

"House?" It took a few repetitions of his name but finally he got a response when he reached out to grab the older man's wrist, feeling his pulse. It was threadier than he was comfortable with, fast. His pupils wide and unfocussed. _Shock,_ he thought, _or… _

"I'm not high." He could admit to feeling a small rush of relief at the man's voice. And the response. House had tried this year. And to his shame he realised no one really had expected him to stay clean. Taub had even started a pool which surprisingly Chase had opted out on.

"Trying to stay that way actually."

"By sitting out in the park at four a.m.?" He asked, sitting up on the bench beside him.

"No place really to go." The older man shrugged. "Wilson doesn't want me at his place. And the Amber shrine is not the place to go if you are trying to stay clean…There is a stash of Vicodin at my apartment which I haven't stayed in for a while so there is probably things living in there. And it is chaos in the hospital and I'm sure I can think of at least three ways of getting my hands on drugs there. So you tell me Chase where should I go."

The calm, emotionless drone of his boss's voice shook him. House had really thought this through. And was really struggling.

"What happened today?" He asked. Only knowing that House had been at the collapse site with Dr Cuddy.

"I tried to save a patient who was trapped under a building. I tried to save her leg… And then when time ran out I had to convince the patient then amputate. Did everything I could. Everything right. And she died anyway."

"How?"

"Fat Embolism."

"You couldn't have foreseen that House."

"I know that. I do." He said unconvincingly. "Had a fight with Cuddy at the scene. Had a building nearly drop on me. That was fun."

"It's been a bastard day." Chase agreed. "And you're tempted to take Vicodin?"

House laughed bitterly. "I'm always tempted. The leg hurts like a bitch you know. Advil is as effective as using a toothbrush to clean the hoover dam. Course crawling and dragging it though rubble may have irritated it a bit."

"There are alternatives…"

"Not for me." House told him flatly, his voice oddly thick. "Not tonight."

"So you're just going to sit here?" House didn't respond, he hadn't looked at Chase once during the exchange, his eyes never straying from a fixed point in the darkness.

"It's freezing out here. You can't stay here." Again no response. "I have a couch. You can crash on. And the hardest drug I have is Advil."

"I will be fine. I'm fine." As if to prove him a liar his chest suddenly shook and a deep rattle reverberated through him as a loud, hard and worried wet cough escaped his lungs. House was unable or perhaps too tired to bother to hide his painful grimace as he held his tender ribs.

"Course you are," muttered Chase sliding off the table grabbing Houses arm to steady him and looking around the table. "Where's your cane?"

"Trenton." House gasped.

"Right."

Chase helped a disturbingly docile House off the table and moved to his left side taking his arm. "If you tell anyone about this…" He grumbled as he held the older man's arm and prompting him to move.

"You're not pretty enough for me, pretty boy." House rasped weakly, the feeble attempt at an insult slightly reassuring as the two exhausted men made their way painfully though the park.

* * *

Cuddy woke up with a start when her phone rang and looked around for a dazed moment at the familiar yet unfamiliar apartment. Then she remembered where she was. She quickly found her offending phone and answered it sleepily.

"Cuddy…"

She listened with a heavy heart as her new assistant dealt her previous plan of a late morning start a severe blow.

"Tell one of the ER doctors to hook him up with an I.V. And run some labs. I'm on my way." With a groan she hung up and stretched, her neck cricking at the awkward angle she had slept in and looked around and frowned.

She had driven to House's apartment last night after handing Lucas back the ring she hadn't even really worn. Surprised at the relief she had felt in that gesture. With Rachel at her sisters she was free to hunt down House and… what she wasn't sure.

She knew she wanted him. That she wanted to try and have a relationship with him. But the prospect daunted her. He was so complicated and she had a child to consider in all this. She hadn't been as oblivious as people thought she had seen efforts he had made. And she was ashamed to realise that she had never even acknowledged it. And now he was struggling. She'd seen it in the past week. The hangovers, the drawn look in his face, his dull eyes.

Realising he was not in the apartment she had decided to wait on the sofa and must have dosed off. But the apartment still seemed empty although it was now seven in the morning. Forman said House had left the hospital just after midnight. She checked her phone but saw no missed messages from Wilson. Meaning he hadn't gone to his friends place. She walked to his bedroom but there was no sign that her eccentric diagnostician had come home last night. Concern bubbling in her stomach she left the apartment, dialling as she walked.

* * *

"I don't know where he is, Lisa. I haven't seen him since yesterday. Are you sure he's not at the hospital?"

Sam rolled her eyes as she listened to James phone call. Of course, first thing before breakfast and House was already intruding on their day. The man hadn't even finished moving himself out of the apartment!

"Have you checked his office? Maybe he changed his mind…I'm on my way in."

"You haven't even had breakfast." Sam protested, irritated as her ex-husband/boyfriend shrugged on his jacket and grabbed his briefcase.

"I know but Cuddy sounded really worried. It sounds like it was a hard night."

She softened slightly as she remembered the news footage last night and decided to leave it this time but she was not going to let House cause problems in their relationship. She would not let him.

* * *

Leaving his bedroom, Chase was surprised to see his boss still on the couch where he had left him a few hours before and a quick glance showed nothing around the living room had moved or searched though. This was unusual behavior for the annoyingly curious and nosy diagnostician. House really must be exhausted. He was sat upright, his leg up on the ottoman, head tilted back in sleep. There was a very slight wheeze as he breathed, his breathing still a little too fast, the doctor in him noted. The flush of his face was also out of place.

"House?" Chase tried to rouse his boss will some success, although the older man responded sluggishly. Putting his hand to Houses forehead, he frowned at the heat emanating from it.

"Just…cos I …let you…walk…me…." Houses attempt at a witty repartee trailed off into his alarmingly labored breathing.

At that moment the doorbell rang. Taub was here to drive him to work and was quickly drafted in to help assess his boss.

"You need the hospital." Chase told House who was stubbornly refusing.

"No... just...need...rest." Did his lips have a purple tinge?"

"House, you're tachy-cardiac, having difficulty breathing, febrile. You have decreased air sounds in your right lung…"

"He's hypotensive and showing signs of cyanosis." Taub stated ripping the blood pressure cuff of the bosses arm. "80/40, House we're not asking we're telling you. I'm ringing a rig…"

"No, let's just get him in the car, he's deteriorating quickly." Chase said. Trading a long, concerned look with his colleague when his boss stopped protesting.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

Sorry for the wait. I am not the quickest at writing or updating but do my best. I have a smidge of medical knowledge and have researched a little on the internet, but i apologise for any glaring mistakes. This is fan fiction and considering how much artistic and dramatic licence the writers and producers of House MD got away with…lol.

* * *

Thirteen was waiting there with a gurney as Taub swung his car into the ambulance bay, slightly faster than was acceptable. It seemed that the moment House had settled in the back seat, his already troubled breathing had deteriorated further. The car had barely stopped when both he and Chase had jumped out and ran round the car to get to Houses door.

The diagnostician's pallor was now a ghastly grey and his lips a dark blue. The two men hoisted him out of the car, surprised at the loud gasp of pain as the man's right leg folded under him and he weekly pushed against Taub, on his right. Ignoring him they somehow managed to get him on the gurney and fitting the oxygen mask.

He could hear the three doctors discussing him, firing questions at each other but he could not concentrate on the words. He tried to take stock of his injuries but his thought processes where sluggish. He hurt everywhere…no that wasn't true…narrow it down…leg, always the leg…chest…head.

Suffocating, he couldn't get enough air…like in the basement…the collapse…Hannah…The secondary collapse. The slab of concrete that hit him, knocking him hard to the ground. Ribs hadn't felt broken then but… Pulmonary contusion…

He tried to pull the mask away to tell them but a well-meaning hand clamped down on his, forcing the mask on his face. Panic swelled. He fought weakly against the hand, he needed to tell them. He felt hands on him, ripping his shirt, pulling away the dressing on his neck, the small sharp sting of a cannula piecing his skin. His eyes searched for a focal point in the blurry movements around him but he couldn't see though the haze that had descended. Too fast. It was happening too fast…

* * *

_Severe dyspnea, cyanosis, decreased breath sounds with crackles and wheezing. Rapid breathing and heart rate_. Chase listed off the signs and symptoms as he uncovered them. He had noticed the bruising on Houses chest as Taub had driven them to the hospital.

House had ARDS. Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. But that was just a symptom. The emerging clue on the older man's chest pointed right at the cause. House had been more severely injured than either he or Chase had first thought.

"Look at that bruise…" One of the nurses muttered as she quickly attached the much needed fluids to the patient. "That has to hurt." She was right. The large deep purple bruise had made all of them flinch when the extent of the injury was revealed.

"We need a chest x-ray now." He barked. "Blood gases too."

"Done." Said Thirteen stabbing House's wrist with an atrial needle, then holding the collected sample out to a nurse as she put pressure on the puncture wound.

"He's very hypotensive. Oxygen saturation 84% and falling, that's on 100% oxygen, Chase." Taub reported inserting yet another cannula.

"We're going to have to intubate." Chase determined as one of the nurses opened the appropriate tray. "And get him some analgesia he must be in agony."

"On it." Thirteen was there again, whipping out the morphine.

"House. Can you hear me? Open your eyes," he said, finally looking at his bosses face, momentarily startled to see House's glazed blue eyes open and fixed on him.

He had been avoiding looking at his patients face. He had worked on House before. When he was shot, the brain stimulation to name a few but underneath the familiar adrenaline spike that usually accompanied the many medical emergencies he had participated in, there was always that streak of panic and dread when he knew that patient. When he cared about that patient.

It didn't seem possible, but House seemed to have lost even more colour, and he could see the cold sweat pouring off him as he gasped under the oxygen mask he was fighting.

"House. You're in ARDS, you're not getting enough oxygen. I need to intubate." House renewed his efforts to pull the mask off, fighting Thirteen's hand.

"No House, don't fight. Just nod ok. You have a massive bruise on your chest. Stupid question I know but did you injure your chest last night?"

A nod.

"Did you fall?"

A nod and a shake. Confused Chase frowned and tried again,

"Something hit you?"

Another nod and shake. He quickly put it together.

"Both. You fell and hit something or were hit and fell."

A nod.

OK.

"Pulmonary Contusion." He diagnosed and House nodded, shooting quick relieved look shot at Chase before closing his eyes momentarily."

Pulmonary contusion, an injury to the parenchyma, the working part of the lung including the alveolar walls as well as the blood vessels and the bronchi. Caused by a blunt injury, Houses lungs were filling with fluid, blood collecting in the alveolar space causing the lungs to lose structure and function. His lungs were failing, the tiny air filled alveoli sac's responsible for absorbing oxygen, hemorrhaging. When he was hit, probably in the front, he suffered the first injury, when thrown possibly on his back, a second occurred. Like in a head injury, the contrecoup effect occurring to maximize the damage.

Chase winced at the image of house being hit by debris and falling hard on the floor, the ceiling coming down him. Had he been scared? Thought he was going to die?

No diagnostic mystery, but a contusion of this severity was most definitely a life-threatening medical emergency. And with the complication of the ARDS…

"His gases are bad, Chase. We need to get his O2 levels up." Thirteen's voice broke into his musing and he snapped back to action.

"House. I'm going to intubate you now…" Chase looked back at the older man to see that he had already surrounded to the darkness. Gulping he moved to the head of the bed, ignoring the shake in his hand as he quickly intubated his patient.

XxXxXx

"He'll turn up." Wilson was saying as he sat in the office with Cuddy. "He's a grown man and I'm not his keeper. I can't be anymore, Lisa. I have another chance with Sam and I need to take it. House is not my number one priority."

Another hour had passed fruitlessly searching for the absent diagnostician. He wasn't at any of his frequent bar haunts, his apartment or his office. His motorbike was still in Trenton. House has simply disappeared.

"I know, but he's only been clean for eleven months and you've essentially kicked him out."

"I didn't kick him out. It's my apartment and it's not like he had nowhere to go. He still had his place. I need to move on. You did with Lucas." He said defiantly, refusing to feel guilty for asking his friend to leave. And Cuddy's eyes couldn't meet his.

"I didn't." She whispered, resting her elbows on her desk she lowered her head into her hands and rubbed her eyes tiredly. But Wilson heard her anyway.

"What was that?"

"I didn't. I tried. I really tried, Lucas was offering me everything I wanted. Stability, loyalty…a father for Rachel. But I still want House."

"But...You…Your getting married." Wilson told her incredulously. "You've stayed away from him all year...You've actually been awful to him the past year, rubbing Lucas in his face now suddenly, what? You've changed your mind!" Wilson was getting wound up now. Righteous indignation filling him. "Is that why you went round to his place last night? To throw yourself at him, get him out of your system. Because we both know he won't say no to you will he?"

"No…I broke it off with Lucas. I just…needed to know if it could work."

"Oh a rebound relationship. Even better. God, Cuddy! There is no way you two could make it work on that. God." Wilson stood up violently, pacing back a few spaces before whirling back at her.

"Did you ever plan on giving the relationship a chance? You've acted like you hated him for the past few months. You've hurt him. You expect him to just forget that? And forgive? You've ignored him, humiliated him…"

"When did I…"

"You told Lucas about his break down, his hallucinations and just sat there whilst he rubbed it in his face! And those pranks your boyfriend pulled in the loft…you could have seriously hurt him."

"What pranks?"

"The flooding, the bath grab rail. House could have been seriously injured by that one. But then again I am talking to the same woman who set up a trip wire in his office."

"I had nothing to do with any of those pranks in the loft." Cuddy surged to her feet this time, unable to cope with her guilt and the accusations being leveled at her by a hypocrite. "I didn't even know they happened and don't play mister innocent with me. You've been known to sabotage his cane, and you've not been such a great friend yourself these last few months. You PAID people to babysit him! To get him out of your hair. You don't think that would have hurt or humiliate him."

Unable to answer Wilson glared over the desk at her and they stood for a charged moment absolutely furious with themselves and each other. When a knock sounded at the door. But instead of waiting for an answer, Foreman just opened the door and barged in quick paced.

"House is in the ER, ARDS caused by pulmonary contusion."

"Doesn't sound like the patient needs a diagnosis to me" Cuddy snapped. "Tell House to either find a case or report for clinic duty."

"No, you don't understand." Foreman preserved.

"Can't you see we're in the middle of something?" Wilson barked this time, but Eric had worked with House for six years, he knew how to stand his ground.

"Dr Wilson, House is the patient."

* * *

You might have guessed that I'm not a big fan of certain characters behaviours in season 6. Lol. Wow this is cathartic. House is no angel but their behavior…grrr.

won't let me but any reference direct links up. but thanks to trauma .org and British lung foundation, bmpj and wiki. for information from their webpages.

Hope to update soon


End file.
